From Switzerland to Viet Naam, overland, 2005. Part Ten: Beijing to Ulan Bator.

April 1st, 2nd & 3rd I didn't record anything on the train trip back from H Ni to Beijing, but did manage to take several photographs and finally shot some video... and I met some interesting people (see Smugmug photos). I had booked my evening taxi before I went to the Training Center on Friday morning, checked again when I went back to the hotel at lunchtime and (needless to say ??) had to rebook when I suddenly had 35 minutes between me and train departure time. The eventual rush left me on the wrong side of the station, but a Vietnamese railway employee grabbed my suitcase and led me across all the railway lines in the shunting yard, dumping my suitcase on the top step my carriage. She then took two bottles of water out of her pinafore pocket and presented them to me, one in each hand. And she refused a tip, or payment for the water. I really must try to come back again.... ************** Sunday, 3rd April 2005 Well, I left the humidity in H Ni, and made my way up here to Beijing; arrived today; nobody to meet me where it was arranged they would meet me; humped my heavy luggage around, got a taxi and went to the hotel... got a message from the person who was supposed to have met me, who hadn't been briefed by her office... I don't know if the message didn't get through at this end, or whether the person from Moscow didn't send it on... I'm beginning to wonder, because when the girl came to the hotel later to give me my ticket, it was made out for a four-person compartment... yet everything was arranged months ago for me to be in a two-person compartment... so I rather exploded all over the place... I've spoken to my wife on the phone and she talked to Ursula (the Swiss lady in Lutry from 'Study Russian'). Rahel then called back after she'd spoken to Ursula who couldn't understand what had happened and so now she (Ursula) is going to call Mila in Moscow..... With the problems in the past with Mila (two is enough, I think; if there are any more from her, I don't know what I shall do), I certainly won't give them my unreserved recommendation, but I shall certainly give them my advice and observation about how they're going to lose clients all down the line, unless they can pull their finger out. Obviously, I do want to get into a 2-berth compartment, at the same time I'm going to be buggering around for two days instead of enjoying my stay in Beijing... I'm going to be screwed down to the telephone trying to sort out this problem again. Very annoying. Not very pleasurable at all. So I don't have very much 'nice' to say tonight. There are 24 laps to go of the Bahrain Formula 1, with Alonso and Trulli up in front... (on the telly). The telephone has just rung, so I thought it was somebody about my ticket, obviously enough... but it wasn't. It was someone who said:"Mathage. OK?" ...when I tried to get a massage in Viet Naam, it didn't work. I couldn't find any blind masseurs or masseuses, and anyway they wanted to give anything &

everything but a massage (which was not what I was looking for - I really DID want a proper massage)... and I can't start messing around with that now here, or arguing with anybody, so the answer was "No". It was possibly a legitimate offer, but... In fact, that's one of the few real disappointments about my trip this time: In the 1960s, just about the first thing I did when I arrived in Taipei, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur or wherever, was to book a massage. The first time I arrived in Taipei in 1966 after about 40hrs of plane hopping, I checked into the hotel, enquired about a massage, ordered a tea 'infusion', had a quick shower and was back sitting on my bed when the masseuse arrived with her guide. I had heard that it was official government policy to restrict the occupation of masseur/masseuse to the blind and partially sighted, which seemed a particularly forward-thinking approach to handicap (this was before my first journey the length of India where I became aware of deliberately mutilated children being the cash cow for a family or an Indian Fagin, but that's another story...). I fell asleep during the massage, to wake many hours later in a darkened hotel room; perhaps it was the pattern of changing neon lights across the road that woke me. I was incredibly hungry but wonderfully relaxed. It just seemed a bit sad to have 'wasted' 36 (or was it 60?) hours of my limited time in Taipei. I took out my carefully folded scrap of paper with the address of a Chinese restaurant where I had been assured no US military and very few foreigners ever went, had a shower, dressed for a clammy evening and went down to reception to check my mail and to order a taxi to the restaurant. Which was when I found out that I hadn't lost 60hrs or even 36: in fact, it was the same evening that I had arrived and therefore I'd been in the country for less than 5hrs! The continuing magic of massage by expert blind masseuses was something that I counted on throughout my travels in the Far East in the late 60s. The participants on my Documentary course in Cua Lo thought it very funny that I really wanted a massage parlour and not a knocking shop. ....switch the telly off you idiot: you don't even like motor racing. Good night Roger; let's see if you can get up in time for breakfast tomorrow. ************** It's 1.30 on Tuesday 5th April. I'm in Beihai Park, again, where I was in February... and I've gone round -more or less- photographing... being very conservative... re-photographing places that I photographed in February, when it was all icy. Here, people are out enjoying the beginning of the spring weather... I didn't record anything yesterday because things were pretty rough. As I mentioned, when I arrived on Sunday, nobody met me... there seemed to have been a cock-up, the message not passed... by Mila... again... in Moscow... She was very nice company for the day, but she seems pretty incompetent as far as organising things is concerned, because the other thing is that she really had booked me into a 4-berth compartment. It looks as though Clio is going to be able to change that tomorrow, so I'll be in a 2-berth compartment, which is what I've paid for ! But I would have thought that after the cock-up in Moscow

the first time around, that Mila would have pulled her finger out and made damn sure that nothing else went wrong this time, but it doesn't seem to have happened, so... I don't feel terribly confident about what's going to happen when I arrive in Moscow. Of course, everything might be perfect... but I don't think the preoccupation beforehand is what you pay for; if I were back-packing, if I'd arranged my own ticket coming back -which would have cost me about half the price if I'd bought it in H Ni -and that includes somebody going up into China with a copy of my passport, buying my ticket, coming back, having a 15% profit on top and it would still have cost me only half the price of the ticket from Beijing to Moscow that I WILL be paying- then things need to be said in the future and I shall have to make the time to say them. It's a great shame. Sooner or later -and I think probably sooner- somebody is going to be working on the net and get the TransSiberian under control, whereby we'll be paying real prices rather than whatever people think they can make out of you. I should have got used to that in Switzerland - that's what the country's all about, unfortunately. But it's still rather sad AND very annoying, especially if you're trying to arrange one thing and you spend more of your time, your own time, than they seem to be spending, by trying to ensure that things are working properly. Perhaps I should offer my services to them. We shall seeeeee..... Anyway, I've just had my lunch - a chicken curry. I forget what I had in February, but I sat in the same place: last time I sat inside because it was freezing, now I'm sitting outside on the balcony overlooking the lake... the lake which was also of course frozen last time. ************** I've just walked around the outer perimeter of the Imperial City to say "au 'voir" and am sitting on the corner of the moat wall where I filmed my first Chinese snowballers in February. And guess what.... ? Just across the road (so it's a 2 minute walk to the Red Wall Hotel) there's a plaque on a wall discretely advertising The Chinese Institute of Massage and Acupuncture, which, needless to say, is not open at 9.45p.m. I'm off to say goodbye to my Moslem friends and wash down a clutch of their excellent lamb kebabs. ************** Wednesday morning, 6th April 2005 07.40 08.37-08.45 09.28-09.36 09.52-09.57 11.37-11.42 14.10-14.26 16.13-16.23 20.39-23.15 Ulan-Bator Time Beijing Nankou Juyongguan Qinglongqiao Kangzhuang Zhangjiakou Datong Jining Erlian Beijing Time

23.40-01.20 04.50-05.15 08.45-09.05 13.15-13.50 16.44-17.05 19.10-19.20 20.50-22.05 Moscow Time 17.13-17.43 17.53-21.46 22.29-22.31 23.17-23.19 02.00-02.23 07.03-07.13 09.16-09.39 09.54-10.06 10.40-10.42 13.40-14.05 17.44-18.07 20.33-20.35 22.40-23.00 03.32-03.52 06.58-07.00 08.03-08.06 10.12-10.32 12.26-12.29 15.45-16.13 19.45-20.00 23.39-23.54 03.12-03.24 06.52-07.12 11.29-11.52 17.22-17.42 21.16-21-39 00.45-01.05 06.58-07.13 10.39-11.02 14.19

Dzamynude Thursday, 7th April 2005 Sain-shanda Choyr Ulan-Bator Zonhala Darhan Suhe-Bator CUSTOMS & IMMIGRATION

Dozorne Naushki CHANGING BOGIES Jida Gusinoy Lake Ulan-Ude Friday, 8th April 2005 Slyudyanka Irkutsk Irkutsk II Angarsk Zima Nizhne-Udinsk Taishet Ilanskaya Krasnoyarsk Saturday, 9th April 2005 Achinsk I Bogotol Malinsk Taiga Novosibirsk Balabinsk Omsk Ishim Sunday, 10th April 2005 Tumen Sverdlovsk Permi II Balezino Kirov Monday, 11th April 2005 Gorkiy Vladimir Moscow

Moscow time: Monday, 11th April 2005 ************** Well, it's 8 a.m. on Wednesday the 6th April and I'm on the train. I had to carry my own luggage -75 to 80 kilogrammes of it- from where we left the car to the other side of the station, but I'm on the train. I'm sharing the compartment with a young lady who's getting off in Ulan Bator... which means we have a compartment for two. The ticket WAS sorted out and changed and given to me this morning and I gave it to the attendant,

so I probably shan't see it again until we get to Moscow. Unfortunately, the mist going out of Beijing is rather the same as the mist we had when we came into Beijing on that first day, way, way back in February. Which probably means that when we get up to the Great Wall of China in a little while, I shan't be able to see very much more than I was able to see then, which is a shame. But at least I am on the train and, if all goes well, I'll arrive on the 11th in Moscow. Then we shall see what happens. Oh yes! The other thing is that I received a copy of a fax from Ursula in English confirming my ongoing travel, that I was crossing Moscow and was picking up my tickets for a continuous trip back to Switzerland; this was what I asked for after the latest trials & tribulations (and which was very kind of Ursula), but I'm afraid that it means (nice as she is as far as company is concerned) Mila really is not the competent person to be dealing with this kind of problem. Perhaps if I'd been a little more demanding, or crotchety or.. I don't know, an invalid or whatever, she might have been SEEN to take the problem a little more seriously. Then there might have been the normal (occasional) few moments of anxiety, but I might then have been able to spend my 3 days in Beijing enjoying them, rather than spending a day and a half wondering and worrying about the bloody ticket. That kind of thing should really be avoided. ************** We're 9hrs into the trip and -what can I say?- the train is on time, although this is probably going to be a regular message with every day that I record! ************** It's now 5.30 in the evening, still Wednesday 6th April. We've passed a remarkably clean place called Benhong... nicely cleaned, except for plastic bags! Bits of plastic bags, flying plastic bags, a washed-out pastel rainbow of plastic bags: the bane of the 20th century and god knows how much of the 21st... I can understand my friends in Italy who go fishing and switch their minds off -don't even notice the plastic bags clinging to every branch, under water, beside the water and everywhere around- but just looking around at this immense country, I ask myself "God Almighty, how can you clean all that up? How can you?" ************** Thursday 7th April The young lady sharing my compartment and her brother and girlfriend came down and ate their evening meal here with me last night. (The brother and friend were in a 4-berth compartment two carriages away) Then instead of passing the port, they gave me some HORSE MILK. So I had a glass or three of that and... really, it's quite amazing. It tastes a bit like cows' milk, but more like a cold 'hot toddy'.. milk with something added! And in fact, it has a very distinct alcoholic effect. Very pleasant, really very, very nice. Apparently, it's one of the specialities of Mongolia. People told me "You'll be all right there if you like mutton". Well I now know that I also like horse milk. I asked them if they made cheese from it, but they couldn't tell me. We're about an hour before Ulan Bator at the moment... not bright sunshine, but there's no snow either, although it's obviously still very very cold outside,

well below zero. But it's impossible to guess the temperature just by looking at the animals and people walking around outside. We have 4 engines pulling this train which I've managed to photograph as we've gone round bends, but again, there's the usual problem with double glazing, both inside, outside and between being filthy; though not as dirty as when we left Moscow to come here in February, so I think there must have been some kind of regular clean-up in Beijing, although it's still pretty mucky... and it's still almost impossible to focus through the glass (see photos on Smugmug). Also, sadly... I'm about to be on my own.... My travelling companion is a news-reader on Mongolian TV. Her brother speaks good American English, but she and her friend both communicate better in German: they both studied in Munich, the friend for a whole year. They have gone to the 4 berth compartment to write all those postcards that they had little or no time to take care of during their 10 day holiday in Beijing! Still, I have an invitation to visit the national TV station next time I come... ************** It's a quarter past twelve on Thursday 7th April, and again I'm struck by this image -and above all the feeling- of these huge, wonderful, wide open spaces. Solitary individuals, way up there in the distance, walking from one place to another... obviously knowing where they're going. Nobody else around, they really do seem to walk singly - not in couples or threes... very much solitary people. I can see one out there at the moment who's obviously - well, no, not obviously, but I presume he's come from a van which is parked a good mile and a half away from where he is at the moment, and he's walking in the direction of one, two, three, four, five cows or heifers or... whatever you call them... and they're about another mile away; he hasn't driven the -if it is his- he hasn't driven the van right up to the animals, so they're way, way away and he's walking steadily towards them. Now the train's just passing another herd of animals, a herd of a dozen or so... the noise from the train has made a couple of them skip a little bit, but again NO human being near them. They're walking gravely in a given direction... and there's another group about 500 metres away also walking in the same direction... and way over in the distance, there's yet another group all walking on a parallel course... but no human beings there at all. Nobody. Wow.... ************** It's funny coming into built-up areas in Mongolia ('cos that's what we're doing, we're coming into Ulan Bator, which I came through in the dark last time, so I'm really looking forward to seeing it). Again, looking out of the window now the sun is out, with very gentle clouds up above, very thin... beautiful sunshine... the whole place looks really lovely. The young lady who was sharing my compartment told me that the total population of Mongolia (not Inner Mongolia, which is part of China, but Mongolia proper) is 2,000,500. And 970,000 of them are in Ulan Bator. It's a huge, huge country, so you can imagine why these people are wandering around by themselves: the population density outside the urban areas must be... I dunno, I couldn't even work it out unless I had a little more info about the number of cities, towns and permanent villages...

Now there are suddenly cars on the road over there, so we're obviously very close to Ulan Bator. Buildings are pastel shades again, nicely put together... the space is made the most of... very nice, very pleasing... I'm looking forward to being able to get off for a few minutes and filming on the station in Ulan Bator, in order to have a few pictures which are NOT grimed up from the double glazing which is an ongoing problem. I really must ask Michael Palin how the hell they managed it, and how much it cost them to clean and/or remove train windows. I don't have a budget for that. ************** The young American family in the next compartment has been met by other teacher-missionary residents. The husband struck up conversation in the corridor (which was fine), but then went on quickly to try and convince me that Jesus, or rather the Mormons, would be able to save us all, me included (which was not at all fine). I expressed my views about any and every form of proselytiser in no uncertain terms, whence he rushed back into his compartment and locked the door (to protect his two small children from the devil next door?). People who live by and practice a code or an ethic have my respect, or at least understanding, but when a creed insists on an "us and them" division of humanity, it is simply stoking the fires under a mass which is just about ready to go critical. The balcony scene in "Life of Brian" should be played in a continuous loop to both the teachers and the taught. **************